NECSS will be held April 9th–15th, 2015, in New York City at the Fashion Institute of Technology. The SfSBM part of the program will be Friday, April 9 10 (that’s the 10th, not the 9th) and you can attend one or more of the days. $95 for one day or $195 for the entire conference.

I read a lot of the pseudo-medical websites. The writing is at best pedestrian, often turgid, and, at its worst, incoherent. It is rarely either engaging or clever.

Wit, the clever bon mot, the amusing turn of phrase or retort, is rare at best. So rare I cannot think of an example. It is ironic that those who engage in fantastical treatments are so often lacking in cleverness with language and thought. The closest you get to humor are the painfully-lame cartoons at the Natural News. I am sure that the readers will flood the comments with examples of all the clever writing I have missed in the world of pseudo-medicine just to prove me wrong. Not that the reality-based world is much better. It is the rare author on the internet whose style keeps me coming back for more.

I am happy to report some good news: chiropractors, naturopaths, acupuncturists and assorted other practitioners of pseudo-medicine didn’t fare too well in the 2013-2014 state legislative sessions.

We’ve been following their legislative efforts all year over at the Society for Science-Based Medicine. Some state legislatures meet in yearly sessions. At the end of the year, pending bills die with the session. Some meet only every other year. Others meet in two-year sessions and, in some of these, legislation introduced in one year carries over to the next year. All states with two-year sessions ended these sessions at the close of 2014, except New Jersey and Virginia. If you want to see how your state operates, several websites can help you: MultiState Associates, National Conference of State Legislatures and StateScape.

Chiropractors

Chiropractors are already licensed in all 50 states and all of their practice acts permit the detection and correction of the non-existent subluxation. Having achieved that goal, the focus of chiropractic legislative efforts is to expand their scope of practice (the holy grail, for some, being primary care physician status), turf protection and mandates requiring insurance reimbursement or their inclusion in various activities, such as sports physicals, concussion treatment, and scoliosis detection programs.

The most interesting chiropractic bill, one from Oklahoma, didn’t fall into any of those categories:

Chiropractic physicians in this state shall obtain informed, written consent from a patient prior to performing any procedure that involves treatment of the patient’s cervical spine and such informed consent shall include the risks and possible side effects of such treatment including the risk of chiropractic stroke.

A newly-published review of neuroscience research looking at the predictive value of functional and anatomical imaging raises interesting questions about the role of such studies in learning, psychiatric treatment, and even the treatment of criminals. “Prediction as a Humanitarian and Pragmatic Contribution from Human Cognitive Neuroscience” by Gabrieli, Ghosh, and Whitfield-Gabrieli and published in Neuron, does a thorough job of explaining the current state of the research and pointing to where future research is needed.

The basic idea is to use noninvasive imaging to look at the structure or function of the brain as a way of predicting future behavior, and then using those predictions to help guide treatment and education interventions, and perhaps decisions regarding parole or further treatment of criminal behavior. This concept raises many issues, including the technology being used, the state of the research, the ultimate potential for this line of research, and ethical considerations.

The major question underlying this entire endeavor is, to what extent is brain anatomy and function destiny? (more…)

In a recent “Perspective” article in The New England Journal of Medicine, three physicians (Drs. Cox, Borio, and Temple) make a strong case for not letting the rush to save Ebola patients tempt us to deviate from good science and skip the randomized controlled trial (RCT). Their arguments cut to the essence of the scientific approach to medicine, and they deserve careful consideration.

Ebola is uniquely scary

Ebola is the kind of threat that really gets our attention. The virus was first identified in 1976, and prior to 2013 there were several small outbreaks in Africa with death rates as high as 90%. This time the death rates are lower, but the numbers are much greater. It has spread to several African countries, and a few cases have even reached the US and Europe due to infected travelers and health care workers. We face a risk that Ebola may become endemic, smoldering along as a constant presence in Africa.

There is no known effective treatment. Fear of Ebola has sparked bizarre conspiracy theories and claims of “natural” cures and prevention kits from homeopaths, alternative medicine advocates like Mercola, and purveyors of remedies like colloidal silver and essential oils. These have been covered on SBM here, here, and here. (more…)

One of the more difficult conversations to have with a patient as a cancer doctor occurs when a patient, recently informed of her diagnosis of, for example, breast cancer, asks me, “Why did I get this? What caused it?” What almost inevitably follows is an uncomfortable conversation in which explanations of the multiple known causes of breast cancer do not satisfy the patient. The reason, of course, is because when a patient asks, “What caused it?” she doesn’t mean what causes breast cancer in general or in statistical terms. Rather, she means, what caused my breast cancer? It’s a question that can only occasionally be answered. For instance, if it’s lung cancer and the patient is a smoker, then it was almost certainly smoking that caused the cancer, because lung cancer is a relatively rare cancer in the absence of smoking. In the case of breast cancer, contrary to the prevailing belief that leads women with breast cancer to be puzzled about how they could get it when there’s “no cancer” in their families, only around 5-10% of cases have a familial or genetic component. That means that around 90% of breast cancers are what we call “sporadic,” which means that we can’t identify a specific cause. Or, as I like to say, “We just don’t know.” Worse, in the case of breast cancer, the environmental factors we know about appear to contribute modestly at best to the risk of cancer. (More on this later.)

Understandably, patients hate hearing “We just don’t know,” some vague handwaving about genes, and that there is nothing that we know of that they did that caused their cancer. People—including oncologists—really don’t like the concept of “sporadic” cancer, mainly because humans crave explanation. The default assumption is that everything must happen for a reason and there must be a cause for every disease or cancer. Perhaps the most ridiculously emphatic statement of this that I’ve encountered thus far comes from (who else?) über-quack Mike Adams when he heaped contempt on the idea of sporadic disease as “spontaneous disease.” He did this in the context of a story describing how, after Dr. Mehmet Oz had followed recommended care and undergone screening colonoscopy to look for polyps, he was shocked that he actually had some. This led Adams, in his usual inimitable fashion, to construct a straw man so massive that it could be seen from space when he set it on fire, declaring that “colon polyps, in other words, appear without any cause!” and that “mainstream medicine…believes in the theory of ‘spontaneous disease’ that ‘strikes’ people at random.”

Not exactly.

On the other hand, there is a lot of randomness in disease, not just cancer, as hard as it is for Mike Adams, or anyone to accept. Just because there is a varying amount of randomness in who gets a disease does not mean that mainstream medicine claims there is no cause to these diseases. Rather, for diseases like cancer, it’s a stochastic process, meaning that chance can play a role—sometimes a big role—in determining who gets sick. Indeed, just last week there was more evidence supporting this idea published in Science. Unfortunately, much of the mainstream press coverage presented the message of the paper a bit too simplistically. Even more unfortunately, it was the authors who encouraged this, as did the Johns Hopkins University press release about the study, which was entitled “Bad Luck of Random Mutations Plays Predominant Role in Cancer, Study Shows“. Yes, I groaned when I read this title.(more…)

The practice of medicine, particularly our pharmaceutical and surgical interventions, involves a constant struggle between risk and benefit. If the physiology or anatomy of the human body is altered, even with the best of intentions, there is always a potential downside. There are certainly instances where the risk to benefit ratio is extremely favorable or unfavorable and the right recommendation is obvious, and unfortunately there are times when it isn’t entirely obvious what the next step should be. But there has been a trend of steady progress in regards to improved safety and efficacy over the past several decades.

The treatment of pain has of late been one of those areas where the picture is becoming a bit less cloudy. We are learning more and more about the potential negative outcomes related to the long term use of opioid medications, such as physical dependence, addiction and even chronic pain. The way that these drugs have been prescribed in many patients has caused more harm than expected, and in some instances more hurt than help. Doctors generally strive to alleviate pain and suffering but, once again, good intentions don’t decrease risk.

In the neonatal and young infant population, the management of pain has had a rocky history. I’ve written about pediatric pain in the past, in particular the potential difficulties in managing acute pain. I won’t go into detail (read my prior post), but we have truly come a long way since the days of performing major surgery on newborns without any analgesia at all. There are areas where we need to do better, however. Children are still less likely than adults to be adequately treated for pain.

But things have improved. And as more children receive appropriate management for pain, the side effects of that management must increasingly be dealt with by healthcare professionals, the patients and their families. One of the issues that is typically observed and managed in neonatal and pediatric intensive care units is physical dependence and the subsequent occurrence of withdrawal symptoms.(more…)

Happy New Year! Today’s post was some old material, dusted off, repackaged, and updated for 2015.

New Year, New You, right? We’re just into 2015, and you’ve resolved to finally get serious about your health. Starting today. But first need to cleanse yourself, eliminating last year’s lifestyle and dietary sins. You’ve seen the ads and the Facebook links, all suggesting you need a “detox”, “cleanse” or “flush” to be healthy. Supplements, tea, homeopathy, coffee enemas, ear candles, and footbaths promise you a detoxified body. Amazon has entire detox and cleansing categories in supplements and books. The descriptions all suggest detoxing will deliver a renewed body and better health – it’s only seven days and $49.95 away. Dr. Oz has several detox plans – you just need to decide which one. The local naturopath sells detoxification protocols, including vitamin drips and chelation. Even your pharmacy probably has a wall of products for sale. Wouldn’t a purification from your sins of 2014 be a good idea to start the year? Unfortunately, there’s something very important that detox promoters aren’t telling you. (more…)

There is an ideological subculture that is motivated to blame all the perceived ills of the world on environmental factors and corporate/government malfeasance. Often this serves a deeper ideological drive, which can be anti-vaccine, extreme environmentalism, or anti-GMO. The latest environmental bogeyman making the rounds is glyphosate, which is being blamed for (you guessed it) autism.

Glyphosate is the active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup. It has been widely used for about 40 years, and with the introduction of GM crops that are Roundup resistant, its use has increased significantly in the last 20 years. It has therefore become a popular target for anti-GMO fearmongering.

Glyphosate is one of the least toxic herbicides used. It inhibits the enzyme 5-enolpyruvylshikimic acid-3-phosphate synthase which interferes with the shikimic pathway in plants, resulting in the accumulation of shikimic acid in plant tissues and ultimately plant death. The enzyme and pathway do not exist in animals, which is why toxicity is so low. Still, chemicals can have multiple effects and so toxicity needs to be directly measured and its epidemiology studied. (more…)

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread–and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness–
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!”

- The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Alcoholic beverages have always inspired strong opinions pro and con. Omar Khayyam included wine in his vision of Paradise; Carrie Nation took a hatchet to saloons. Humans have been drinking alcoholic beverages for at least 12,000 years. In earlier eras beer and wine were dietary staples that provided essential calories and were safer to drink than water. Early cultures worshipped wine deities; today, some religions ban all forms of alcohol while others embrace red wine as an essential part of a holy sacrament. Alcoholic beverages are widely used as an accompaniment to meals and as a social lubricant (as Ogden Nash put it, “Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker”). Prohibition didn’t work.

It’s always good when opinions can be backed up by scientific evidence. Those who drink, especially wine lovers, can bolster their personal preference with the evidence from recent studies showing that moderate alcohol consumption prolongs life and improves health in various ways. Those who prefer not to drink are being told they can get the same benefits from resveratrol, a component of red wine. Just how good is the evidence, and what does it really tell us? (more…)